An article that reports on the ongoing investigation of American oil companies purchase of land in Equatorial Guinea at prices far above the market rate. Investigators believed these purchases may have been a method of bribing government officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Governments of resource-rich developing countries often do not provide information about their revenues from natural resources, nor do multinational extractive companies publish information about payments made to the governments of those countries. Such opacity hides billions of dollars worth of financial impropriety, according to this Global Witness report.

This paper discusses fiscal surveillance criteria for the countries of the Central African Monetary and Economic Union (CEMAC), most of which depend heavily on oil exports. At present, the CEMAC's macroeconomic surveillance exercise sets as fiscal target a floor on the basic budgetary balance. This appears inadequate, for at least two reasons. First, fluctuations in oil prices and, hence, oil receipts obscure the underlying fiscal stance. Second, oil resources are limited, which suggests that some of today's oil receipts should be saved to finance future consumption. The paper develops easy-to-calculate indicators that take both aspects into account. A retrospective analysis based on these alternative indicators reveals that in recent years, the CEMAC's surveillance exercise has tended to accommodate stances of fiscal policy that are at odds with sound management of oil wealth.

This article assesses the changing nature of the contemporary political economy of Equatorial Guinea. It provides an overview of the complex and dynamic web of elite rent-generation and explores the extent to which the development of an oil industry has contributed to a monoculture of accumulation. It is concluded that, despite the oil windfall, other, ‘illicit’, modes of elite rent-generation persist and have even intensified.

This article outlines the rise of Equatorial Guinea as one of Africa’s leading oilproducing countries and investigates the political, economic and social effects of becoming a petro-state. The article is based on the author’s field research in Equatorial Guinea in the autumn of 2003 and interviews with senior oil company staff, government officials and staff of international organizations as well as secondary sources. This research demonstrates how reliance on oil and gas exports can lead to profound changes in a country’s political economy.